How Small Businesses Can Make the Most Out of Their Company Vehicle

Company vehicles do more than get you or your employees from point A to point B. They need to be safe, they need to promote efficiency, and they need to look the part. The last thing you want is to drive up in an old Ford Transit that is rusting along all of its edges without any notable branding to a nice neighborhood. That doesn’t give off the right image nor does it inspire your client’s neighbors to hire you.

Your image is everything, which is why marketing is something every business, creative, influencer, and self-made success spends a significant amount of time on. When you are a singular contractor, or you only have a few employees, however, you need to find ways to market that don’t require active participation or large, continuing subscription rates.

That’s where your vehicle comes in. By having a professional, clean vehicle, you can convey professionalism. By having an effective skin wrap, you can market as you work, but only by having your entire vehicle work for you can you get the most out of it.

How to Prolong Its Life

Being careless with your tools is a great way to damage both your tools and your vehicle. You want your vehicle, after all, to last as long as it possibly can. These vans and trucks are not cheap and when you first start out buying this new vehicle can strain your budget to its limit. Repayments are horrible for every business. In fact, repayments and loans are often the reason why even the biggest companies in the country go bankrupt.

Take Toys R Us for example, a very prominent and well-known name around the world. They were the go-to for children’s toys, and they are now closing their doors. It is a mistake to look at that situation, however, and simply assume that its due to online retail giants like Amazon taking away their market shares. Toys R Us made around $11 billion USD in its last fiscal year, and yet it is still going bankrupt and closing down many of its stores. How is this possible? It has debt loans to repay. This happened after a consortium bought Toys R Us and took it private, only, rather than having the cash to buy out the company outright, they essentially took out a mortgage.

If repaying a loan can doom a massive corporation like Toys R Us that pulled in $11 billion USD, think what your repayment loans can do to your new business? Don’t ever underestimate the danger of monthly repayments. Instead, focus on getting the vehicle you need for as cheap as you can (while maintaining quality) and do all that you can to prolong its life. The longer you have the vehicle, the longer you can work without thinking about repayments.

It means ensuring that the paint will protect your vehicle from rusting, or that you install spray bed liners from Speed Liner to ensure maximum durability and strength of your vehicle. Regular checkups and cleaning it inside and out will also prolong its life and keep it working like a dream.

When your business requires you to have a vehicle, you need to make sure that the repayments are as short as possible, and that your usage of said vehicle lasts as long as possible. Being saddled with debt both professional and personal can put your company under before you can blink, so always take your debt seriously.

Safety Features

It will cost you, but having a custom storage solution within your vehicle can help prolong its life and the life of your tools further. It is also how you will ensure your safety and your employees’ safety. A lot of trades tools are dangerous, and the last thing you want is something shifting or moving while you are in transit that then falls out when you open the door. In the best case scenario, this looks unprofessional to any witnesses, in the worst case scenario you badly injure yourself.

Thankfully, there are many options to help you kit out from shelves to toolboxes, cabinets, and even slide out shelves. The better you use the space in your vehicle, the more tools you can bring and the better and more safely you can store them.

Advertising with Your Vehicle

Driving up in a plain white van does you no favors. You want your business to be advertised as often as possible, and there is no better place to advertise this than when you are on the job. That is why skin wraps are so important for business. Every time you have a job and park outside of your client’s home is when you should be advertising your business to their neighbors. Every time you are out driving to and from a job is when you should be advertising, and so on. Put advertising on your vehicle, and you will market your company everywhere you go. It’s like owning a moving billboard; only you don’t need to pay a monthly fee.

To make your vehicle’s advertising as effective as it can be you need to think simple. Over-crowding your design will do nothing except make it harder to understand who you are and what you do at a glance. You want your name to be prominent as well as what you do. This could be your name and then a tagline that reads “Gardening Experts” or “The only plumber you will ever need” and so on. The shorter your tagline, the better, because you want those driving by to have as much of a chance to see and remember you as possible.

To help you design the best possible ad for your vehicle, remember to ask your customers. Ask your friends and family and even strangers on the street what they think of your mock-up before you commit. The last thing you want is to spend a lot of money only to have someone point out it looks like your name reads something else.

Be smart with your company vehicle, and make it work for you. It’s the only way to make the most bang for your buck and the best way to better your business.

Tom Brown

Tom Brown is an automotive market enthusiast living in the United States. He holds a diverse background in automotive marketing and enjoys utilizing that to produce insights into the inner workings of the industry.